This guide is about an Assassin who kills with the skill 'Broadside'. Broadside is often called a 'mainstream skill', because it is a very, very strong skill that can be used in every situation.

What is Broadside? Broadside is a skill from the assassin Throwing Skill Tree. Unlike in Classic LoD, throwing skills became very popular in Median.

When you just start to play MedianXL you should keep this in mind: ' Thre is no unuseful skill in Median XL. Also there is no 'best' or 'better' skill. One skill is better in this situation, and one in another. Everything depends on the playstyle you prefer - that's all.

Broadside is a skill that deals damage that is based on your weapon and your passive skills. When you 'cast' it, a colored cloud appears around you, and shoots missiles at your enemies. The cloud itselfe is targeting enemies who are in its operating range, which is around ten yards. You may notice that after you used Broadside, all throwing skills, including Broadside itself, get blocked for some seconds. While this time out you have to use melee skills or teleport.

An other advantage ov this skill is, you can run away or attack with another melee skill while the cloud deals damage.

What makes Broadside so strong? Each shard deals 3/2 weapon damage, which means that one Broadside shard deals 50% more damage than a normal thrown knife - and we get a lot of them! At higher skill levels you can get ~100 missiles per cloud. Together with the right equipment, Crushing Blow, and the Ways (the assassins passive skills), she gets deadly. An assassin is easier and saver to play than other classes, so she is suitable for starters.

I will introduce all skills that make sense for this build first, and than list up the main variations you can use in the Chapter Playstyle. In all variations you have to max Broadside.

We start with our main skill:

Broadside I gave you a short introduction to the skill above. So here are more information’s about the skills itself.

Broadside locks out all skills that are no melee, summoning or buff skills - in other words: you can not use throwing skills while the Lock-out. The Lock-out duration starts with 17,6 seconds and decreases per Hard Point you put into the skill by 0,4 seconds - a so called Self-Synergy. Every skill increase its own maximum Level by 1 every 6 Level-Ups you character dose. Broadside is a Level 24 skill, and at Level 120 the maximum skill Level is 18. You can increase your maximum skill levels with charms that you get after you sucessfuly mastered some challenges, items and after you manageing the Minigames. After all of those, Broadsides maximum skill level would be 28(!!). But beware, some of these challenges are very hard! You see you can (and should) get the Lock-out very low.

You get +2 shards every skill level - meant are Soft Points - or in other words: per +1 Level, you do +300% more damage to Broadside compare to a normal knife throw, because of the 3/2 weapon damage modifier. A normal knife throw did 1/1 weapon damage.

The mana cost stay constant on each level.

Note--> The Lock-out dose not influence timers on other skills like Blink or Hades Gate.

--> Max this skill in every case!

Other Throwing Skills

Scorpion Blade Storm Crows Wychwind Maelstrom MK II

Broadside locks out throwing skills, so those are not worth putting more points into them. But in some situations they can be useful - like to snipe a single or just a few monsters. For those cases, even one point is enough.

Since Patch_1.90 I prefer Mealstrom, which became MK II in a later patch (but still has quite the smae effect) on the left icon while all other skills are on the right.

Using Wychwind in not that save, because this skill increase tha damage you take for a long duration that only can been lowered with Hard Points into the skill. This skill have its own build, so I refere to those both guides from MinionOfBoredom and Relic.

Storm Crows also needs Hard Points to get stronger, but we don't have those points.

Mealstrom MK II wins against Storm Crows and Scorpion Blade as Secondary Throwing Skill - and its only use is to snipe something that is not worth to use Broadside against it - or just to kill something that is 1 1/2 screen away from you.

Our Pirategirl should be skilled in the using of melee skills. This is the only way to deal damage while the Lock-out. For this reason Broadside is called the Melee-opener. Those skills are in the Melee - and Ki Trees. But we can not use all of them.

Shadow Refuge, Black Lotus Strike and Death Blossom require a Naganita or a Claw. They have ther own builds, the Flowergirl and the Blue Death Assassin. Batstrike requires a Claw - so this skill is although not usefull for us. That leaves those tree skills we can use with wearing a Throwing Knife:

Queen of Blades A charge that launches Blades in period of one second to nearby enemies. Doing 1/2 weapon and passive damage. The number of blades is based on the number of Hard Points you put into this skill. Dealing damage while you are doing nothing - what you want else? 5 Hard Points minimum. More than 10 are not that usefull, because you may never have more than 10 to 15 Enemies around you.

Hades Gate A timerd skill that teleports you into a copes and emits an invisible nova that damages allenemies in radius based on the skill level. One point should be enough, because the Pirategirl build is mainly based on +skills from the equipment (see below), but up to 5 Hard Points won't hurt you. At higher skill levels the nova radius increases by 0,7 yards per level.

The timer is 4 seconds - the only way to reduce the timer is the skill Premeditation, which can decrease the timer all assassins timered skills, by up to 85%. (see below).

-->; Zero or up to fife points.

Crucify Emits eight homing missiles on attack and up to eight additional missiles, depending on the amoughnt of enemies around you, that deal 2/3 weapon and passive damage. The Target Seek Range remains the same each level scince v_1.90. Soft Points also increase the additional damage per hit from a Crucify shard on an enemy. Use it as you main Melee-Skill on the left mouse botton - it can be used with any weapon.

See below on the Chapter 'Playstyle' - there I will explain the variations of the Pirategirl.

--> 1 point is obligation !!!

Note You can use Shadow Refuge, Black Lotus Strike and Death Blossom, when you have a Naganita or Claw in your second slot. My experience with the Weapon switch Style while the Lock-out is, that it is annoying at higher levels, where the Lock-out is short. I recommend you to use only the skills I mentioned above. And a build that uses the Weapon switch Style is a Hybrid, and this variation deserves its own Chapter. See below.

The assassin class is blessed with the lowest Defensive in Median. You don't have any skill that increase your defensive. But you get an amazing Crowd Control Skill and the ability to avoid a high percentage of all kind of damage.

Blink Teleports you to the target point and stuns all enemies around you in a small radius. More points increase the stun duration by 0,2 seconds per level. This skill is the assassins way to survive. You can stun the whole screen in a few seconds. The timer stays hard at 10 seconds, but it get decreased by Premeditation (see below). You can get a timer that is around 2 seconds (probably more) on this skill.

--> You should spend at least 10 points minimum into this skill, for a longer stun duration. But more is better! You will note the difference - Blink is the best Crowed Control Skill in the game beside Charm.

Premeditation [passive] This skill decreases all timers on assasins skills. You 'll find a table of the diminishing returns formula of thins skill in the appendix of this chapter.

---> 15 Points here should be enough, but it can be more. You should aim Premeditation to a level which gives Blink a timer below 2,8 seconds. With all the +skills from the equipment you can catch this.

Perfect Being [passive] This skill let you avoid ALL KINDS OF DAMAGE, melee attacks, missiles - including spells, ect. - without trigger any block or avoid animation. This skill is just awesome good! You find a table below of the diminishing returns formula of this skill in the appendix of this chapter. ---> 5 points into this skil minimum - whan you reached a high character level, you may can put more into this if you feel it is requiredl. Like I mentioned a few times, this build likes to have much +skills on the equipment. At higher levels, the chance to avoid did not increase much, and maxing the skill is not worth.

You can hit the 55% mark just with a single point into this skill. In my opinion, Premeditation gives more survivability with more points, because of the lowered timer on Blink.

Doom This skill is a curse. An enemy that is cursed by this one, gets the shown amount of additional damage per hit by every kind of attack or missile (including Broadside's shards, QoB's blades, Crucify's shards, Wychwind's rifles and all other throwing skills knives)

E.g.: if your Broadside skill emits 50 shards on a cursed enemy, each shard will do additional damage based on the skill level of Doom. Doom makes no difference if you are using a skill that deals 1/2 or 3/2 or 3/4 Weapon Damage - the additional damage applies per hit.

Doom gets a 15% damage Synergy from Crucify - that is a giant one! If you want to use Doom, you should (no: you have to) max Crucify, too.

Vampiric Icon Ennead Challenge Reward Skill Timerd Healing Skill that summons a burning Female Gender Icon on the ground, that heals you when an enemy runs through it. Fast in healing, but only when an enemy runs through the Icon.

In many situations this can be very useful, like Tran Anthula where you are under constant fire. I can not say you if you like it, you have to know it your self.

---> Zero or one point, but one point is not waste.

Way of the Spider [passive] Adds poison damage over several second to you weapon attacks and increases poison spell damage by up to 120% when maxed. Poison damage is not suitable for this build because we 'll try to get much damage per shard hit as possible. And while poison is damage over time it makes no difference if 10 or 100 shards hit.

---> Leave this one here with one point.

Way of the Phoenix [passive] Adds fire damage to your weapon attacks and increases fire spell damage by up to 120% when maxed. This is what we need! The fire damage increases rapidly, thanks to the 20% damage Self-Synergy. With good equipment and much +skills on it, this skill will add 6.000 - 10.000 fire damage (or more) to a normal thrown knife. A Broadside missile with 3/2 weapon damage be even higher!

---> Max it and keep it high as possible.

Way of the Raven [passive] Black Road Challenge Reward Skill Adds cold damage to your weapon attacks and increases cold spell damage by up to 100% when maxed. The weakest elemental Way - weaker than Phoenix and Griphon. The average cold damage is just too low for all those points you have to pump into it..

If you focus your build on Doom+Broadside and you look for one elemental passive skill, you better use Way of the Phoenix.

---> My Reference is nothing into this. You better put your points into Perfect Being, Premeditation or or use them for a higher Blink skill level.

You can only pic up one of the three Uberskills!

Beacon Charge, cast and forget, no Timer, the duration is up to several minutes. Every 25 second a Nuclear Bomb comes down at a random point close to you, and destroys everything that is not (fire or) poison immune. The detonation is eye candy, and the explosion effect is devastating! Only disadvantage is the randomness and the 25 seconds delay to the next bomb drop.

---> If you choose this skill, one point is enough, really. You may choose this skill when you play the Doom + Crucify Version of this build.

Way of the Griphon [passive] Adds flat lightning damage to you weapon attack and increases lightning spell damage.

The lightning damage seems to be low at the first look, and this skill will not add more damage than Way of the Phoenix. But this is a way to deal with immunes and beside this you can add several thausand lightning damage. Also benifits a lot from additional +skills. Remember that the damage will be even higher because of the 3/2 weapon damage modifier on Broadside!

---> This is the skill I recommend you to use when you are playing this build. Max it, high as possibe!

Phase Bomb This is a special Skill for an Assassin who prefer to kill with Bombs, Traps and Black Holes.

---> Don't use this one for your Throw or Melee Assassins, you will die when you hit an enemy which is affected by Phase Bombs Curse.

Uberskill Note: Way of the Gryphon is the skill we should go for. The additional damage bonus is just too nice and it is passive. Beacon is skill that have more benefits on a Flowergirl, which don't need weapon damage, but if you are going for Doom + Crucify, you may not have enough points to use WotG. In this case, go for Beacon.

For this build: 'Way of the Gryphon' &gt; 'Beacon' &gt; 'Phase Bomb'

Strength Base - 100 points just eough for wearing the equipment. Remember you can craft Jewels with -12% requirements. You don't have to wear heavy armors with huge defensive, so you may want to use Runewords in light leather armors - but, this is just a suggestion.

Dexterity A lot - Everything Increase you chance of Blocking and the Chance to hit an enemy. If you prefer to get more surviability from Vitaliy, just enough for gear, but I sugggest every point into Dexterity.

Vitality All or nothing (beside what you need for your equipment) You would get more survivability from higher Block. Moreover, your Surviving ability are the Skills from the Ninja tree.

Energy Nothing We don't use Spelldamage, so we wouldn't benefit from Energy. Broadsides mana cost are annoying in the early game, but later you 'll not notice them.

You should focus on +skills.

Every skill benefits from it: the timers get shorter which is equal to faster crowd stunning, the stun-duration increases, the chance to avoid damage increases and beside that all, this is the only way to increase our damage because of more Broadside shards and more damage from the ways.

Excurse: Why are Animation Speeds so important?

Another things we should look for are increased Animation Apeeds, especially Faster Cast Rate (fcr) and Faster Hit Recovery (fhr). Increased Attack Speed (IAS) is absolutely unimportant for this build.

We can increase those speed with Jewels and especially those Runes:

Kur Level 78 15% Faster Run / Walk - in every item

Ix Level 81 15% Faster Cast Rate - in every item

Ath Level 90 15% Faster Hit Recovery - in every item

No Level 100 15% Faster Block Rate - in every item

This is the stuff we are locking for. We need fcr for Blink. It often happens that you get crowded by enemies which keeps you in stun- or block-look - in other words you are not able to move or attack because the get hit animations trigger all the time.

Aim FCR to 92% or 163% Aim FHR to 86% or 200% Aim FBR to 86% or 174% NOTE: this is essential for your surviability - more than everything else on your gear!!!! [i]You also should use Mystice Orbs with this Modifiers on you Armour gear!!

Crushing Blow Another important thing is Crushing Blow. It kills much faster with it - so it is the most important source of damage after the passive Ways. You can get it from Perfect Rainbow Stones into a weapon and the Mystic Orbs (MO's), which you definitely should abuse for your weapon.

Death Touch Tier 6 Unique The unique tiered Throwing Knife. Easy to get and the best thing you can get. The Tier 6 versions gives you +3 Assassin Skills, 30% Faster Run, a giant bonus to Attack Rating and a Required Level of 45 - which means you can put a lot of Mystic Orbs on it (prefer Crushing Blow and Faster Cast).

Meshif's Iron Parrot Sacred Unique Hard to get. +1 Assassin Skills, 15% Chance to cast level 9 Broadside when you Kill an Enemy (extreme offensive) and a huge bonus to Dexterity. The Required Level is 100 - so you can just use a few MO's on it. I personally prefer Death Touch, but this one is also nice. Experiment with this one if you have it.

Naiad Lai Rune in a Throwing Weapon A defensive one. 25% Chance to cast level 8 Glacial Nova when you Kill an Enemy and Slows Target by 25% lets you play pretty save. The damage bonus is not useful for this build. Required Level 100.

Icebird Tier 6 Unique Tiered Unique Flying Knive. Very easy to get. Gives you a 10% chance to cast a big freezing nova on striking. Extreamly defensive. Go for it if you feel required to pump up your surviability, even in the end-game!

Jitans Kamon Tier 6 Unique Adds massive elemental damage to attacks and reduce physical damage taken by 10%. Also gives you a 10% chance to cast Guard Tower when you kill an enemy Not much to comment here, it is a nice one.

The other tiered unique Body Armors Steel Golem, Shroud Royal and Queen of Glass are also very usefull, but Jitans Kamon wins against them, so I 'll not mention the other tiered unique Body Armors here.

Lets have a lock at the sacred ones.

Runeflash Sacred Unique 15% Crushing Blow, Bloodlust Charges and increased life is what we want to have.

Hratli's Craft Sacred Unique +1 to All Skills, 25% Faster Cast Rate, 50% Faster Hit Recovery, +100 to Dexterity, Damage Reduced by 10% and 125% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items. Hratli's Craft is the perfect Body Armor for this build! PERFECT! If you have this one, use it!

Mirage Zod in a Body Armour +2 to All Skills, 60% Faster Run/Walk, 30% Faster Cast Rate, up to + 60% to all Resists and Slows Attacker by up to 20% Not like Hratli's, but a cheap solution.

Unity Ghal (Great Rune) in a Body Armor +1 Skills, massive Attributes and massive Resistances Maybe you like to waste one of your Great Runes for this, if you found one.

Erawan Nih Rune in Body Armoure The all-round solution for any weapon user. 10% Crushing Blow and up to 15% Damage Reduction make this a good and cheap choise!

Note: if you use Runewords, use fcr/fbr/fhr jewels for them!!

Huu, there are several Sacred Unique Helms and Circlets with +Skills, which are all usefull, but still the best and cheapest solution you can get is a Magic Circlet with +3 to all Skills which you can find or buy from a vendor. The required Level is always 66, so you can cube a lot of MO's on it.

A good solution for your head is a Sacred Crafted Circlet with +Skills and Reanimates from a Hidden Shrine with fcr/fhr/fbr Runes or Jewels. Same for the Runewords, just keep your eye on +Skills

From the Set section there is only one item:

Witchhunter's Hood Cap - Assassin Melee Set (16 to 20)% Bonus to Strength, (16 to 20)% Bonus to Dexterity, +5% to All Maximum Resistances, All Resists +(31 to 40)% and Damage Reduced by 5% make this item to the official Survival-Cap.

Same like for Helms: look for +Skills, Reanimates and Attributes.

Kali Pul in Gloves +2 to all Skills is what you get from this, and lot of space for Mysic orbs!

Hexward Totem Shield - Sacred Unique +2-4 Assassin Skills, up to -25 to all enemy elemental Resistaces, and a lot of other stuff... wow

For other shields, look for +Skills, and 1% Increased Chance of Blocking / high Block Rate.

The Dreamcatcher Unique Amulet +2 to all Skills, huge Resistances, 15% Faster Cast Rate and up to -10% to all Enemy Resistances. Cube it with other -1% Enemy Elemental Resistance MO's or with Thunderhammer on kill. Don't forget to upgrade it! Just what the Pirategirl needs!

The Doom Amulet There are Amulets that give a small chance to cast Level 44 (!!!) Doom on Kill - wow, they even can spawn as rare items with +4 to all Skills (after upgrade). When you skill Crucify,, the Doom-proc will benifit from it (!!!) because of the 15% Synergy from Crucify. Some poeple concider this as the best choise... Be happy if you have one!

Just look for +1 to all Skills and some affixes you need or just use good old mainstream Empyrean Band.

Note: Do not underrate the low level Unique Ring of Truth! It is extremly usefull with 15% fbr, 25%fhr. One of the most underratet items in Median XL. The level requirement is 20, wich means you can put a lot of Mystic Orbs on it!

-I- Playstyle There is not much to say about the Playstyle. Really! Just play the game. You general strategy will be

- Stun enemies that are comming directly towards you with Blink - (optional) Stun more of them - Use Broadside and run around or attack with Crucify... - (optimal) Stun even more of the crowd - ...attack the rest of the crowed with Crucify and Hades Gate.

Those tactics will work in the regular game and ALL uberquest and Heroics if you have enough experiance. Blink is your friend!

-II- Other Stuff

Kurast BA - just Blink at the top of a totem and use Broadside. The totem will get hit in every way!

-III- Build variations

The "true" Pirategirl She uses elemental damage only to kill her enemies and abuses Blink most of the time. She max the two elemental Ways (Phoenix/Griphon).

---> Here is a Template for this Build <---

Piratewitch Uses Doom. She curses her enemies before she starts to activate Broadside. She put most of her points into Doom and its synergy Crucify. Against immune enemies, she may cant even max a single way,otherwise she wouldnt have enough survival abilitys from the Ninja Tree. Immunes she kills with Beacon and minions (from Mystic Orbs eg.) and Reanimates.

---> Here is a Template for this Build <---

Another version of this build uses an amutet that casts Doom on kill. If youn are going for this, leave Doom at ZERO points and just skill Crucify - the proced Doom will benifti from the 15% Synergy on Crucify. Than you will have more points for your Surviability Skills or WotP.

Credits

in no spezific order

Laz for creating this mod and brook all our QQ Sing in Silence for support and all the nice pictures Trenderizer for send me a copy of this guide after it was lost